SPOILER: IT NEVER ACTUALLY WAS. Tennessee Snail Darter No Longer a Threatened Species.

The litigation to stop the Tellico Dam was pushed by a then-faculty member at the UT College of Law, Zyg Plater. It was a clever, and at the time novel, leveraging of endangered species law, but it generated a lot of political blowback because (1) it was pretty obviously opportunistic; and (2) you could hardly come up with a less attractive species name than “snail darter.” People are more willing to accept sacrifices to save, say, bald eagles or California condors.